BeautyDialogues

Kite Runner

I saw a remarkable film the other day: The Kite Runner (I have the book, but had not yet read it). Watching this film was one of those experiences that moved me in ways and for reasons that I almost can't discern or describe. Parts of it were extremely painful to watch, and yet it felt like a necessary pain, the kind of unavoidable pain that is part of being human.

Swedenborgian Haven

This months’ Thought Leader Gathering was held at the Swedenborgian church in San Francisco.

No, I'm not referring to a congregation of Swedish ex pats, but a branch of Christianity based on the teachings of Emmanuel Swedenborg, co-founded in the 1800s by a group of English nature-lovers including the mystic William Blake and his wife Catherine (I was delighted to find this little factoid surface from the depths of my English Lit-trained memory).

The 100-year old chapel of this national historic landmark is particularly lovely, with its nave’s bow of madrone arching overhead and bits of branch and stone decoration lit by what seemed like a thousand candles along the walls (weddings here must be beautiful).

The little churchyard surrounding the chapel is graced by what is probably one of the very few mature yew trees in the region - powerful earth magic indeed. I’d never even heard of it, and it warmed my heart to know something like this could exist right in the heart of a city.

Co-Creation

The always delightful Barbara Marx Hubbard has an intriguing theory about why we sometimes "click" with each other in such profoundly generative ways ...

I've often experienced the thrill of creative communion she talks about, and I love the provocative twinkle in her eyes when she names it as she sees it. Of course we'd all be feeling pretty good too, if we'd stimulated as much vocational arousal in the world as she has. :-) What a Beauty!

John O'Donohue

I've just heard that John O'Donohue, the great Irish poet/philosopher that I have quoted here so often from his fabulous book on Beauty, The Invisible Embrace, died unexpectedly on January 3rd.

His friend David Whyte has written a beautiful memorial, including a poem he wrote for John.

My sorrow at this loss is beyond words.

Doing "Nothing"

Out and about on this morning's beauty walk, I happened to ask a neighbor about his holidays, which he said he'd spent pretty much "doing nothing". That sounded like absolute bliss to me.

I've been reading David Lynch's Catching the Big Fish: Meditation, Consciousness, and Creativity, and in it he says it takes up to 4 hours of uninterrupted time, most of it quite literally doing nothing, to produce just one hour's worth of creative output.  His book is a poetic and scientific inquiry into that "nothing" - specifically training ourselves through meditation to "dive deep" for the big ideas that fuel a creative life. He describes the bliss on the other side of meditation as a "thick beauty".